Suppose you stopped working with everyone who touches your website tomorrow. Make a list of what would still be yours.
For a lot of small businesses that list is empty. The site lives on an agency's platform, the domain is registered under someone else's account, and the analytics belong to a vendor. Even the phone number on the site forwards through a tracking service the marketing company owns. When the payments stop, all of it disappears.
I saw this setup for years from inside the PPC and SEO industry. I wouldn't call most of it a scam; lock-in is a common business model in that world, and you're allowed to say no to it.
What owning your site means#
Ownership comes down to a short list of things registered to you, in accounts you control.
- Source code. The files that make up your site, in a repository you can hand to any developer. A login to someone else's editor doesn't count.
- Domain. Registered to your business, in a registrar account with your email and your card. Whoever controls the domain controls where your customers end up.
- Analytics. The property belongs to your account. Years of traffic history are worth keeping, and if you lose them, every future decision starts from zero.
- Content. Your photos, text and reviews, exportable in a format you can reuse.
- Hosting. An account in your name, even if someone else manages it for you.
You can hire someone to look after any of this, as long as the accounts stay in your name.
Common ways businesses end up renting#
Platform builders. Wix, Squarespace and similar tools tell you the trade-off up front. They're easy to start with, and the site can't be moved. If you leave, you take your text and images and rebuild everything else from scratch. That's fine for testing an idea, but it gets expensive as the long-term home for a business.
Proprietary agency platforms. Some agencies build only on their own closed system and present it as a convenience. In practice, firing the agency means starting your website over, and both of you know that every time the price comes up.
Bundled hosting. The site comes "included" with a monthly marketing package, and nothing is in your name. When you cancel, the site goes offline, and sometimes the domain goes with it. This is common enough in local marketing that I'd assume it applies to you until you've checked.
Tracking numbers. Some packages include a phone number that forwards through the vendor's call-tracking account. The call data is useful, but if that number is on your trucks and the vendor owns it, leaving them means giving up the number your customers already call.
Questions that show whether you're locked in#
Ask these before signing anything, or ask them today about the setup you already have.
- Who is the registrant on my domain? Can I log in to the registrar right now?
- Can I get a copy of the site's source code today? What format?
- What exactly happens 30 days after I stop paying you?
- Is the analytics property under my account or yours?
- Does the phone number on the site belong to me?
- Could another developer take over the site without your permission or your platform?
If someone gives clear answers to all six, you're dealing with professionals. If the answers are vague, or you hear "you wouldn't really be able to move it", the cost of leaving is being built into the product. You pay that cost whether or not it appears on an invoice.
What to do about it#
If you already have a site, set aside twenty minutes this week. Check who your domain is registered to, and confirm you can log in to the registrar, the host and the analytics account. Then move those logins into your own password manager and out of whatever email thread from 2021 they're sitting in.
If you're commissioning a site, put ownership in the agreement: code, domain, analytics and content are yours on delivery, with a documented handoff.
That's my default at MAKR Labs. You get the repository, the domain, the analytics account and a handoff document any developer can follow. If I vanished tomorrow, your site would keep running and anyone competent could pick it up next week. I consider that the minimum, and you should expect it from everyone who builds for you.